Q LEGALIZED IN TURKEY.

Mark Liberman at the Log reports on the legalization of the letters Q, W, and X as part of Tayyip Erdoğan’s “Democratization Package”:

The Turkish Alphabet Law of 11/1/1928 was aimed at shifting Turkish from Arabic-based to Latin-based orthography, and it was quite effective in suppressing the use of the Ottoman script. But it has also been used to suppress Kurdish, historically spoken by 10-25% of the country’s population.

But the post is especially worth reading for the passage from Gravity’s Rainbow Mark cites (“ƣ seems to be a kind of G, a voiced uvular plosive. The distinction between it and your ordinary G is one Tchitcherine will never learn to appreciate…”); if you enjoy that as much as I do, you will want to read the much more extensive series of quotes from Pynchon’s masterpiece in this nine-year-old Log post (and a quote from a different section at this eight-year-old LH post)—and, hopefully, the book itself.

Comments

Great tales there, in Baku and in Seven Rivers too, wow. One of my relatives was a real-life Azerbaijani linguist posted to Kyrgyzstan (and newly married to my aunt, a native Francophone Jewish poet who learned to ride on horseback in those road-less highlands). But he spent most of his life rather unproductively, behind the barbed wire of various labor camps and concentration camps…

And you can support my book habit without even spending money on me by following my Amazon links to do your shopping (if, of course, you like shopping on Amazon); I get a small percentage of every dollar spent while someone is following my referral links, and every month I get a gift certificate that allows me to buy a few books (or, if someone has bought a big-ticket item, even more). You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

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"Evidence that the internet is not as idiotic as it often looks. This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor. It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

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(Cole's blog circa 2003)

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